State court backs 34- to 70-year prison term for gang-related shooting in Lebanon

Concluding that prosecutors presented "overwhelming circumstantial evidence" of his guilt, the state Superior Court has refused to overturn an Easton man's conviction and 34- to 70-year prison sentence for a gang-related shooting in Lebanon.

Investigators said the March 2009 incident for which Maurice Pearson, 28, was convicted involved a confrontation between members of the Bloods and Crips street gangs, which are known for violent acts in cities nationwide.

Maurice Pearsonprovided photo

The victim was a bystander who was standing on his porch.

According to court filings, Russell Lawrence was shot in the chest after his 16-year-old stepdaughter yelled at two groups of people who were throwing bricks at each other outside his home near Ninth and Church streets in Lebanon. The stepdaughter had been urging the groups to end the confrontation.

Lawrence survived, but nerve injuries caused by the gunshot robbed him of the use of his right arm. Another man who was shot in the legs during the melee refused to cooperate with police.

Investigators said a man who was driving home from a church meeting saw 20 to 25 young people involved in the incident, saw one of them fire the shots and then watched the gunman get into a copper colored Chevrolet Cobalt. The witness followed the car until it parked on Eighth Street and summoned police.

Officers, who said Pearson was a member of the Bloods, claimed they found several items in the car, including documents and a cell phone, that belonged to Pearson.

When Pearson was found in Easton, he initially gave police a false name. Later, he said he had been involved in the gang fight and that the gunshots had been fired accidentally as he struggled with another man over a pistol, court records state. The man Pearson identified as the gunman was shot and killed in another street fight before Pearson's case went to trial.

On appeal to the state court, Pearson claimed his lawyer was ineffective for not trying to suppress statements Pearson made to police, for not seeking to have his trial moved out of the county due to news coverage, and for not introducing Pearson's "life history of abuse" to try to mitigate the penalty he faced.

In the Superior Court's ruling issued this week, Judge Sallie Updike Mundy wrote that, while Pearson claimed police lied about statements he made to them, he had not argued that police violated his civil rights in obtaining his statements regarding the shooting.

His argument that his trial should not have been held in Lebanon County falls flat because none of the potential jurors said they had heard or read any news accounts of his case before being selected for his jury, Mundy noted.

Also, she found that introducing testimony regarding Pearson's childhood woes - he claimed he ran away from an abusive home at age 10 and lived alone for years in New York City - would not have altered the sentence he received.

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